Their journey hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing to begin with, and things get demonstrably worse when they meet the nefarious White Bone Demon, a female monster hell-bent on sampling some of the monk’s tender flesh. The Monkey King), Zhu Bajie (“Pigsy”), and Sha Wujing (often called “Sandy” in English translations). Accompanying him on this trip are Sun Wukong (a.k.a. Xuanzang is searching for the sacred Buddhist scriptures and hopes to bring them back to China. Like other films centering on the Monkey King, this full-length cartoon adaptation of Wu Cheng-En’s classic novel, Journey to the West, picks up the story in medias res, as the Tang Priest Xuanzang makes his pilgrimage to India. The magic isn’t gone, but it’s certainly diminished without the pioneering Wan brothers at the helm. Although it adopts the character designs and overall visual style of its predecessor, the film doesn’t quite measure up. Even so, it illustrates one of the central relationships in the novel – between the Monkey King and the Tang Priest Xuanzang – with utmost clarity.Īfter releasing the seminal animated film Uproar in Heaven in 1965, the Shanghai Animation Film Studio finally got around to revisiting the adventures of the legendary Monkey King in the mid-eighties with The Monkey King Conquers the Demon. A still from Monkey King Conquers the DemonĪlthough serviceably entertaining, The Monkey King Conquers the Demon isn’t as good as Princess Iron Fan and Uproar in Heaven.
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